Freedom of Access & Privacy

The Library Policy on Freedom of Access and Privacy is drawn from principles articulated in the University Senate’s Policy File (Freedom of Expression), the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, and other documents from the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom.

Freedom of Access

The Library shall maintain an open stacks policy allowing any member of the university or public community access to our print and media collection. Materials kept in storage and closed stacks shall be accessible through timely and regular retrieval by Library staff for all patrons.

Internet access will be provided for SDSU affiliates and community users. There will be no blocking software installed on any computers (except to prevent virus contamination). In the case of proprietary software and sites governed by distribution licensing, access will be governed by these legal contracts.

SDSU affiliates will be able to access the internet from any public computer in the Library. Community users will be provided a number of terminals allotted to them and are restricted to this subset of computers. The restriction is necessary so we are in abidance with distribution licensing agreements that limit use of specific software to SDSU affiliated patrons exclusively.

There will be no time limits governing internet access for SDSU affiliates. There will be a daily limit (currently set at two hours) for community users to ensure equitable access to such resources by community users.

Privacy of Access

The Library will not track identifiable patron search history and will keep no record of such. The exceptions to this are:

  1. In circumstances where format of material requires extensive time to verify the return of all relevant borrowed items (ie: a box containing dozens of documents etc). After full verification the patron data will not be kept except in the cases of rare and valuable materials where usage data may be kept indefinitely.
  2. Information on materials received through Interlibrary Loan (ILL) are kept for one year.

The Library may record aggregated data (stripped of identifying characteristics) on website and resource usage in order to improve website usability and collection relevance.

All SDSU affiliated patrons will be required to sign onto internet access terminals using their SDSUid. This is necessary to identify SDSU affiliates from community users and is done solely to be in compliance with legal contracts. All public community members will be eligible to create accounts using some form of government issued photo identification.